A moving and meditative account of the crushing demands of Korean careerism.
In Jeong’s novel, a group of recent Korean college graduates navigate the unyielding competitiveness that permeates both professional and personal life.
Youngbaek Kim has much to be proud of—after he graduates from the prestigious Sky University, he lands a job at Corporation P, the second biggest company in Korea. However, he is plagued by discontent; he studied philosophy in college and feels stymied by the tediously banal routines of office life. Also, he constantly frets about money—it seems impossible that he will ever save enough to buy a home that others will be impressed by, and he fecklessly tries his hand at investment. His friends, Dongjoo Lee and Inyoung Choi, both seem much happier and much better positioned to win the endless rat race that dominates their lives. Dongjoo Lee is a programmer at the top corporation in Korea and handsomely compensated, while Inyoung Choi has a job in the civil service, a position coveted for its stability. However, they are both just as anxious about the future as Youngbaek, and as envious of him as he is of them. The author artfully depicts the Korean obsession with success and a society that strictly separates winners and losers through a process of “verification.” “Verification became a source of envy with everyone trying to take the successes of those around them and spin them as their own. It is high school all over again, with students using Photoshop to falsify their college entrance exam scores to receive verification from the community.” Youngbaek sees a chance at happiness when he becomes engaged to Jungyoon, a woman with whom he falls deeply in love—but her mother talks her out of it, convincing her that she and Youngbaek “just aren’t in the same league,” and that she can find someone with better financial prospects.
Jeong’s tale is impressively thoughtful—he reflects, with great clarity, on the ways in which Korea’s socioeconomic liberalization discarded one prohibitive hierarchy for another. As Youngbaek observes, “There are always more stairs to climb. Stairs upon stairs upon stairs...I guess Korea’s ancient class system of endless hierarchies, has really only changed in name. It will continue to loom over me and on to future generations. Still, climbing endless stairs is different from the impossibility of climbing up a family tree.” Friendships are almost necessarily converted into rivalries, and romantic connections are reduced to opportunities for social climbing, each date conducted in a metaphorical “interrogation room.” The author’s writing has a lapidary elegance to it—he subtly creates an atmosphere of melancholy and sad inevitability, as if there is no escape from the cultural pressures of Korean life. The plot moves at an unhurried pace, which can seem excessively languorous, and there is more than a touch of adolescent melodrama in Youngbaek’s tortured angst—a self-indulgent theatricality that borders on ponderousness. Still, Jeong’s depiction of Korean life, especially as experienced by its younger generation, is marvelously meticulous and rendered with great emotional power.
A moving and meditative account of the crushing demands of Korean careerism.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2023
ISBN: 979-1198200242
Page Count: 226
Publisher: METRIC
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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